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Clear away the barricades and we're still there
My ability to fall asleep before it's light out is pretty badly damaged at this point. It leads to a lot of not very interesting staring into the dark. Around four in the morning on Monday night, I remembered that I had forgotten to pack ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
handful_ofdust's care package along with the rest of the DVDs and decided to stare at a recommended scene from Les Misérables (2012) instead.
As I wrote toderspatchel—
I am incredibly charmed by the presentation of the Thénardiers as a loving criminal couple—Helena Bonham Carter fleecing the handsome soldier while crooning her sob story of an unhappy marriage into his ear, not just flicking the take into her husband's hand as he passes but mouthing him a quick silent grin of I love you as the number riots to a close. (It does go some way toward explaining why Eponine actually turns out a functional human being, not to mention staging the price-gouging verse as an arithmetic lesson from father to daughter as Thénardier tots up the young couple's cash with an attentive Eponine on his knee.) Special mention should go also to Sacha Baron Cohen's outrageously sub-Chevalier French accent, which he reserves for welcoming in the marks and otherwise doesn't bother with, as he should. Bonham Carter is kind of doing her tousled sexy slattern thing, but it works a lot better for Mme. Thénardier than it did for Mrs. Lovett. For starters, her husband looks equally as though he dressed himself out of a wardrobe tip. I loved Eponine handing him his bicorne, as if he were setting out for work in the morning. And he has such a mild expression for so much of the song, as if genuinely bemused by all the chaos going on around him while he makes spectacles and glass eyes and everybody's money disappear. The staging and the camerawork overall is still too busy—I don't know if the problem afflicts the rest of the movie, but it feels like Tom Hooper doesn't trust his actors to be sufficiently magnetic without bits of business everywhere, which I think is totally selling Baron Cohen and in this case Bonham Carter short—and the song is both speeded up slightly and missing a verse somewhere, but I still consider it an entirely functional version, which I kind of didn't previously except on trust of you.
—Last night he insisted I follow it up with "Beggars at the Feast," so as to get the full experience. It's a clever little zinger of a send-off reprise, but it looks at first as though the song is being completely undercut by its staging, with the Thénardiers boasting of their profiteers' tenacity ("Keep your wits about you and you stand on top!") while being given the bum's rush from Cosette and Marius' wedding. It's not until the last line that we can see that far from being slung out unceremoniously on their asses, the Thénardiers have just once again, with perfect literalism, landed on their feet. The footmen heave-ho and they pop down neat as cats—Thénardier even composure-grooms a moment, for all the world as if he'd just been set down a little too abruptly from a sedan. And turning to go, snatches himself a better wig from the nearest doorman, the same way his wife almost absentmindedly palmed herself a new hair ornament from some better-dressed guest on their way in. No, they didn't get their payoff from Marius, but they're just as horribly indestructible as they always said. It's a weird little moment of dignity for a pair of utterly reprehensible characters and, like the reframing of their relationship from a squabbling partnership to actual affection, I like it. Now I just need to figure out how much of the rest of the musical I want to watch.
(Also, I'm rather fond of the look Helena Bonham Carter gives over her smoked glasses as Marius recognizes his own ring on Thénardier's finger and Madame divines just a fraction of a second before her husband that their attempted act of blackmail has just turned into a heartwarming confirmation of heroism and no one is going to cough up five hundred francs for that.)
Oh, and Rob and I signed the lease for our new place this afternoon.
That has very little to do with Les Misérables, but we are very, very happy about it all the same.
handful_ofdust's care package along with the rest of the DVDs and decided to stare at a recommended scene from Les Misérables (2012) instead.As I wrote to
derspatchel—I am incredibly charmed by the presentation of the Thénardiers as a loving criminal couple—Helena Bonham Carter fleecing the handsome soldier while crooning her sob story of an unhappy marriage into his ear, not just flicking the take into her husband's hand as he passes but mouthing him a quick silent grin of I love you as the number riots to a close. (It does go some way toward explaining why Eponine actually turns out a functional human being, not to mention staging the price-gouging verse as an arithmetic lesson from father to daughter as Thénardier tots up the young couple's cash with an attentive Eponine on his knee.) Special mention should go also to Sacha Baron Cohen's outrageously sub-Chevalier French accent, which he reserves for welcoming in the marks and otherwise doesn't bother with, as he should. Bonham Carter is kind of doing her tousled sexy slattern thing, but it works a lot better for Mme. Thénardier than it did for Mrs. Lovett. For starters, her husband looks equally as though he dressed himself out of a wardrobe tip. I loved Eponine handing him his bicorne, as if he were setting out for work in the morning. And he has such a mild expression for so much of the song, as if genuinely bemused by all the chaos going on around him while he makes spectacles and glass eyes and everybody's money disappear. The staging and the camerawork overall is still too busy—I don't know if the problem afflicts the rest of the movie, but it feels like Tom Hooper doesn't trust his actors to be sufficiently magnetic without bits of business everywhere, which I think is totally selling Baron Cohen and in this case Bonham Carter short—and the song is both speeded up slightly and missing a verse somewhere, but I still consider it an entirely functional version, which I kind of didn't previously except on trust of you.
—Last night he insisted I follow it up with "Beggars at the Feast," so as to get the full experience. It's a clever little zinger of a send-off reprise, but it looks at first as though the song is being completely undercut by its staging, with the Thénardiers boasting of their profiteers' tenacity ("Keep your wits about you and you stand on top!") while being given the bum's rush from Cosette and Marius' wedding. It's not until the last line that we can see that far from being slung out unceremoniously on their asses, the Thénardiers have just once again, with perfect literalism, landed on their feet. The footmen heave-ho and they pop down neat as cats—Thénardier even composure-grooms a moment, for all the world as if he'd just been set down a little too abruptly from a sedan. And turning to go, snatches himself a better wig from the nearest doorman, the same way his wife almost absentmindedly palmed herself a new hair ornament from some better-dressed guest on their way in. No, they didn't get their payoff from Marius, but they're just as horribly indestructible as they always said. It's a weird little moment of dignity for a pair of utterly reprehensible characters and, like the reframing of their relationship from a squabbling partnership to actual affection, I like it. Now I just need to figure out how much of the rest of the musical I want to watch.
(Also, I'm rather fond of the look Helena Bonham Carter gives over her smoked glasses as Marius recognizes his own ring on Thénardier's finger and Madame divines just a fraction of a second before her husband that their attempted act of blackmail has just turned into a heartwarming confirmation of heroism and no one is going to cough up five hundred francs for that.)
Oh, and Rob and I signed the lease for our new place this afternoon.
That has very little to do with Les Misérables, but we are very, very happy about it all the same.
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And then in a month we can move stuff all over again!
(Seriously, we are happy. We think we will like this place. We're looking forward to finding out for sure.)
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Thank you!
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Thank you. I like writing about things that interest me. It's actually kind of a bad sign when I don't.
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Zeitgeist!
Mme. Thénardier sounds like a role written for Helena Bonham Carter.
I like her best, honestly, when she's not playing Helena Bonham Carter roles, but she is really talented. (And it doesn't matter that she can't so much sing as Mme. Thénardier, because she doesn't have to. She drove me crazy as Mrs. Lovett, because that is a role that requires a voice and she didn't have it, but here she can talk—and sometimes yell—expressively through her part and she pretty much does. It worked for Rex Harrison.)
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Les Heureux!
Nine
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That should be a Tarot card.
Thank you.
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Thank you!
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Hooray for leases and combined book collections!
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The frustrating thing is that I can't sleep through the days to make up for it; for physiological reasons, that hasn't been an option since June. I think things will have to stabilize once I'm through this move, but I really want to be functional enough on Saturday night for twelve hours of film noir! And also for all the other things, like writing, that I haven't really been doing since Readercon. Which sucks.
Hooray for leases and combined book collections!
Thank you!
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I also particularly liked the symbolism of the last shots of the film, particularly the way the barricade is built in the last sequence.
That being said,
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Thank you. I still haven't seen any of the rest of the film (moving, more moving, still more moving, all-night noir, recovery), but I wanted to say something.
I also particularly liked the symbolism of the last shots of the film, particularly the way the barricade is built in the last sequence.
I will remember to watch that.
and heard 'parakeet' for 'barricade' and now have made a game of doing this with songs from Les Miz.
Heee.
I like the image of "Clear away the parakeets," which seems to posit them as drifts like autumn leaves or May blossom, or possibly just perching inconveniently on all the furniture.
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Yes, exactly! I am also very fond of 'Now we pledge to hold this parakeet ...' particularly after the conversation I had this weekend about why turning birds upside down to make them behave in a ruly fashion does not work on parrots.
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. . . Why doesn't it? Because parrots climb around things upside down for acrobatic fun?
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I used to live with two parrots and upside-down was a favorite game. Almost as good as 'eat all the buttons off your shirt'.